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Posts Tagged ‘Inspiring’

All the World’s a Stage for Precocious Ballerina Lilly Nilly

All the World’s a Stage for Precocious Ballerina Lilly Nilly

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Enter the mind of spunky and precocious 6-year-old Lilly Nilly in the delightful new children’s book, Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet: The Adventures of Lilly Nilly, from author/illustrator and former NYC-based dancer and choreographer Nancy Paris.

Lilly Nilly is a wickedly smart, determined young dance student whose self-appointed mission is to figure out what the heck ballet –– and coincidentally life –– are all about. She sees the world in a unique way, wears her curiosity on her sleeve, and approaches life with a joie de vivre that kids and adults alike will find entertaining and inspiring. In her musings, Lilly asks burning questions like, “Why can’t you hang upside down on a ballet barre if it looks just like an ordinary bar?” Or, “If you’re going to travel in a carpool, should you wear a bathing suit?”

“Young readers will find Lilly’s stories funny and very relatable, especially if they are ballet students themselves,” Paris said. “Adults will find her sharp wit and strong-willed spirit a charming reminder of just how empowering a joyful approach to life can be.”

Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet is complete with illustrations that only Lilly Nilly could have drawn — with a little help from Paris, of course, who used her own experiences as a professional dancer and teacher to inform her narrative. Her mission, Paris said, is to encourage all readers to trust their instincts, seek their own answers, and be kind to all.

“I want people to know that although it was written as a children’s book, I always had an adult audience in mind,” Paris added. “And — it’s funny!”

Author Nancy Paris is an alumna of The Juilliard School and has performed professionally across the U.S. and Canada. As a dancemaker, she has choreographed industrials and private events in New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Palm Springs and Puerto Rico. Most of the incidents in her stories are based on personal experience, with the names changed to protect the innocent.

Paris lives in Manhattan with her husband, Charles Yurick, and loves writing and drawing because she can do it sitting down! Pardon My French is the first of at least three books in The Adventures of Lilly Nilly series.

For more information, please visit www.lillynilly.com, or connect with Paris on Facebook at @adventures.of.lilly.nilly.

Pardon My French – It’s the Language of Ballet: The Adventures of Lilly Nilly
ISBN-10: ‎ 0578316889
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0578316888
Available from Amazon.com

Trish Stevens
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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The Home Stretch: Uplifting Coming of Age Story Explores Complex Themes of Mortality and Forgiveness

The Home Stretch: Uplifting Coming of Age Story Explores Complex Themes of Mortality and Forgiveness

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The diagnosis of leukemia at age 43 laid bare a brief flirtation with escape for Bill Smith. After all, he had battled depression and suicidal thoughts from a young age; mortality was really nothing new for him to grapple with. To put it bluntly, for Bill Smith, the end had always been in view. But that life-defining moment — that brief descent into darkness — triggered a profound fight for survival.

The Home Stretch, from award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston, features everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself), who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. His is a coming of age story in which the peace that allegedly comes with maturity is often shunted aside to make room for yet another crisis. It is also an uplifting story in its candid, reality-based portrait of a man struggling to find personal integrity through challenging conditions.

From an early age, Bill grapples with depression. Raised in a religious cult, he cannot reconcile his own experience with the worldview of his parents, and although he’s bound to them by love and obligation, he rejects their beliefs. His father’s palpable disappointment in Bill leads him to contemplate suicide and to provoke his father into a confrontation with a surprising outcome that would redefine their relationship and alter the course of both of their lives.

Given to a physical, adventurous life, Bill becomes the chief engineer on a seagoing tugboat, and his tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for his fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him. Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.

The Home Stretch is a poignant, ultimately inspiring coming of age story that weaves themes of mortality and forgiveness through life-defining moments of reckoning that many adults have to face head-on and learn to overcome.

Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, for 22 years he worked on tugboats, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. The Home Stretch is book two in a planned trilogy. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch is his back story.

Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book length project. Connect with the author on Facebook (

The Home Stretch
Publisher: Black Heron Press
ISBN-10: 1936364344
ISBN-13: 978-1936364343
Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold

Trish Stevens
Vicky Rockwell
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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Debut Story Shares Inspiring Tale Of Baseball’s Impact On Small Iowa Town

Steve Hellman
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
281.333.3507 Phone
832.569.5539 Fax
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Debut Story Shares Inspiring Tale Of Baseball’s Impact On Small Iowa Town

Minneapolis, MN ― In the fictional village of Cottage Park, Iowa, time is best measured not by the hands of a clock but by the innings in a baseball game. In this quiet, northwestern Iowa community where businesses are shuttered and economic stability is scarce, two institutions flourish: the Holy Trinity Church – as spectacular as any Roman cathedral – and the local, dusty baseball diamond.

Set within a single baseball season in 1974, Tommy Murray’s debut novel, Fathers, Sons, and the Holy Ghosts of Baseball, follows 14-year-old T.J., along with a band of misbehaving teens and three cantankerous old coaches, as the high school baseball team makes a concerted push for the championship – a summit never yet reached by the team from Holy Trinity High School.

For the coaches, the elusive championship looms large as they enter their final baseball season before retirement. For the players, the road to the finals is a confirmation by fire – a rite of passage they must navigate before facing the realities of adulthood.

Along this entertaining, coming-of-age journey, young and old alike ultimately learn that you must sacrifice before you can gain and sometimes lose before you can win.

Author Tommy Murray is a retired teacher from the Minneapolis Public Schools. He is also the author of the forthcoming novel, The Empty Set. Murray is married to Mary Ann, and they reside in Shoreview, Minnesota. In Fathers, Sons, and the Holy Ghosts of Baseball, Murray pays homage to his uncle, who led his high school team to its first state championship back in 1943. His uncle went on to enlist in the army and lost his life when his tank unit was ambushed in the Philippines in 1945.

In Murray’s world, where his father, uncles and grandfathers shared their legacies of devotion to church, patriotism and baseball, baseball is life and death. It’s much more than a sport. Baseball is a religion.

Follow this link to hear an interview with the author and the University of St. Thomas: https://tinyurl.com/y8n4hgjg.

Fathers, Sons, and the Holy Ghosts of Baseball
Beaver’s Pond Press
Release date: October 3, 2017
ISBN-10: 1592986293
ISBN-13: 978-1592986293
Available from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

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